Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

The Delusional Bulls

Good Morning and Happy Friday Chicago!

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If you’re reading this, you made it through yesterday, which is no small feat. Chicago felt like Gotham City — specifically the one portrayed in the “Joker.” Just an absolutely miserable day not helped by the city’s sports teams, and particularly one culprit.

In today’s newsletter, we’re going to get to telling the truth. Sometimes you need to let your adult friend know that there’s a greater than 90% chance that he caused his parents’ divorce — which I do often — and sometimes you need to come to grips with where your favorite basketball team is at.

In tandem with the Gotham City vibe Chicago gave us yesterday was the NBA trade deadline coming and going.

If the Bulls sold, it would have felt like a night in. You didn’t drink and you’re probably better off that way, though you’ll have some FOMO come playoff or night time. But there are better days ahead, the theory goes, due to your decision.

If they bought, it would have felt like a night out filled with double-digit beers and shots mixed in. Reckless, but probably pretty fun, at least for the short-term.

Instead, they opted for the “three to four beers for no reason.” And man, do I hate drinking three to four beers for no reason. The “social drinks” that keep you from a perfectly good night sleep and a caloric deficit, while also not helping you toward that euphoric, all-in night.

The Bulls not making any moves yesterday to improve their situation in the near- or long-term is all reflective of a malignant delusion that this team, as currently constructed, can be competitive come springtime.

To make matters worse, in what can only be described as comedy, the Bulls went on to lose to the Nets last night, a team that traded one of the best basketball players of all time, as well as another top-35 player, away this week. Even the players they got in return for the Kevin Durant trade did not play in the game.

The Bulls have a front office that regularly says they strive for “continuity” and that’s why they’ve avoided moves at the past two deadlines, and in this past offseason. Promptly, after the most recent inaction, they lost to a team half-filled with brand new players, along with young players getting their first shot at regular NBA playing time.

Just a half hour after the Bulls general manager, Arturas Karnisovas, talked about the increased opportunity the Bulls would have because of the players that had left the Eastern Conference, namely Kevin Durant, they lost to his former team without him.

And so perhaps it made sense that the dark clouds and rain over the city made it feel like Gotham yesterday. It set the stage for Karnisovas to summersault onto the press conference floor as the backdrop music of “send in the clown” was heard by everyone except for him.

But that was not the only person who had that song playing in the background of his life today. Me first, Arturas.

After all, I wrote last week that this was what I expected to happen. But as the deadline neared, like a bastard child waiting for his father to take him to the ball game for real this time, I held out hope.

And as the clock hit 2:01 pm CT, all I was left with was my computer, a 26-28 basketball team, and the white and red paint smeared all over my face.

At least my buddy that ruined his parent’s marriage can take solace in the fact that they tried. The Bulls didn’t even do that, and here’s what I am left with.

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Only two teams did not make a single move at the trade deadline. One is the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are 35-22 and in 4th place in the Eastern Conference. They also traded three players and three first-round picks for Donovan Mitchell this past offseason.

The Bulls are the other team. They are now 26-29 after last night’s pathetic loss, in a season filled such losses.

As if it wasn’t enough to have LeBron James breaking the scoring record this week.

All while wearing an all-black suit to the game, a headband during, and attempting hook-shots in mockery of Kareem Abdul-Jabar beforehand. Prior to the game, he told the Orange-County Register — in one of the 74 interviews he partook in this week — that he was “the greatest basketball player of all time.” That was only a day after crying about the Lakers not trading for Kyrie Irving, acknowledging aloud and publicly that he wanted multiple of his current teammates traded badly.

(At least LeBron’s kids had cool shoes on at the game.)

But I digress, as there’s more important things to worry about than ego-maniac, intellectually inconsistent cornballs breaking records. The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Lakers Tuesday night, knocking the Lake Show back to 13th in the Western Conference, which has 15 teams.

There’s the Bulls, who deserve none of the maintained attention they get from us every long Chicago winter.

Throughout Thursday, there were teams upgrading their rosters for next to nothing. Teams that were already far better than the Bulls in the first place. There’s justification for selling. There’s justification for buying. There’s justification for going all in on one side or the other. There’s no justification for standing pat, particularly in the modern NBA, and more particularly in the Bulls’ position.

Three-point shooting was bought for second-round picks. Young players were available as salary dumps. Good defenders were available. Even some of the best players ever, again, were available. The Bulls, despite calling it an “active” deadline, thought to acquire none of them.

There were at least eight teams in the West and six on the East that were buyers. The Bulls were not able to capitalize off of that, and sell to them, either.

Karnisovas didn’t help his case during his press conference prior to the game, either. He sounds pretty dumb at press conferences, man. As one of the first and strongest believers — I nicknamed him AK-4-7, insinuating he would bring the Bulls their 7th ring, for God’s sake — it’s tough to hear.

He doesn’t talk to the media much, but when he does, he just sounds dumb. At first, I thought it was just because english is his second language. Then I started listening to what he was actually saying. These aren’t great ideas disguised by broken english.

I was working hard on not holding his broken english against him, as that would be xenophobic (at least I think that’s what that means). Now, I’m teetering between cutting him some slack for being a Lithuanian-born man that doesn’t always find the right words and thinking he’s just a fucking moron. I’m leaning towards the latter.

And that, frankly, could make me cry. I just wrote a few months ago that the day the Bulls got rid of GarPax and hired him and Marc Eversley was one of the best Chicago sports days of the last five years. That, barring extreme change, has aged extremely poorly.

I’m not all the way out on AK yet, and here’s why. It’s just like Rick Hahn. I’ve always thought Hahn was a smart guy that knew what he was doing, but that he was handicapped by ownership. Given that the same ass hole runs both teams, I still have to give AK that chance, which still means nothing to me in the end. After all, no matter whose fault it is, we keep ending up in the same place.

But it’s getting hard. Here is a snapshot at some of the quotes and talking points from today’s press conference.

K.C. Johnson @KCJHoop

Karnišovas: This group has showed some resiliency because we've played better against good teams. Consistency has been a problem

I listened live, and it was even worse than this. He rambled about how the Bulls lost to good teams last year and are beating them this year, which is a positive change. He said consistency wasn’t there, but what he didn’t mention is that that means the Bulls are losing regularly to the league’s worst teams.

And it’s not as if the Bulls are seven games above .500 and struggling to get up for bad teams. They just sort of are one of those bad teams. At the time, they were two games under .500, and now they’re three below.

The idea that beating some good teams in an NBA season is some sign of improvement, and reason to not do anything at the deadline, is asinine. It’s childish thinking. The NBA is the NBA. Everyone, theoretically, can beat everyone. This isn’t a 4-8 mid-major college football team that’s holding onto their coach because they beat a power-5 opponent. The types of teams you beat should not be a large part of the calculus when evaluating an NBA team. The only exception is adding a player based on failures against a specific team you may see in the playoffs, like an eastern conference team adding a center to help with defending Joel Embiid. Outside of that, it’s nonsense.

K.C. Johnson @KCJHoop

Bulls EVP Artūras Karnišovas: We were pretty active at the trade deadline. It just seemed like there weren't deals to make to improve this group.

This is just categorically false. I can identify ten trades off the top of my head that were made today in which the buying team provided less than what the Bulls could have offered, whether that be non-coveted draft picks or end-of-bench guys.

K.C. Johnson @KCJHoop

Karnišovas: There were so many buyers. We tried to improve our team, but at what cost? That price was not OK with us. Next stage is to evaluate this group the next 28 games.

This is not only leading your team toward purgatory, it’s making sure of it.

The only nuggets we got worth reporting outside of the aforementioned and misguided ones are 1. That the Bulls plan to re-sign Nikola Vucevic. He’s been great. He’s also already on the 26-29 team. and 2. (this was not mentioned explicitly) that Patrick Williams can continue on his upward trajectory, which is all part of the plan of standing pat. Williams played 14 minutes in the game that took place less than an hour later.

The Bulls rank 22nd in playoff wins since the century turned. In the decade prior, they missed the playoffs once (1999) and won six championships. They are a once-proud franchise, and truly, are the benefactors of Michael Jordan and Derrick Rose. They owe lottery balls and the two of them everything. They deserve next to none of the credit.

“Still Gotta Come Through Chicago” has turned into “well, some good players are leaving the East, so maybe we can move up a couple spots in the standings from where we sit now, which is 9th.” The Bulls ethos is now drenched in loser mentality.

There was certainly hope that my desired outcome, which I laid out last week, would come to fruition at some point yesterday. There was a report that the Bulls had been talking to the Knicks about a LaVine trade. That would have allowed the Bulls to recoup significant draft capital, a talented young player, and get off a behemoth contract that is not worth it now, and certainly won’t be worth it later.

LaVine played well last night, while still holding onto the ball at the end of quarters until after the buzzer sounds in order to not have heaves that could help his team win hurt his personal field goal percentage.

The Bulls aren’t good right now. Their ownership refuses to take the team above the tax line. And their front office seems unwilling to change the current roster with those constraints.

They lost to the trade deadline. They were 30th out of 30 teams. Then they lost to the Nets. And then another report surfaced, which suggested that the Bulls are set to announce that Lonzo Ball is out for the season during the All-Star break.

The Bulls aren’t stuck. They’re where they want to be.

Leave a comment, let it out. Next week we’ll finally talk more baseball — after all, what the fuck else are we going to talk about?